River Children
by Sonjouou
Summary: They found him in a Muggle hospital with too many broken bones to count. His brain was fried - nothing could be done. But a guilty Remus insists on finding out what happened to Harry, while he slides deeper into a strange insanity. Year 5 AU
1. Magic of Madness I to V

Part I: The Magic of Madness

* * *

I.

The world was spinning all around him. It was laughing at him. He could hear the laughter even though everything was quiet. Everything was laughing at him – high, cold, cruel laughter.

He walked with a weird gait. His leg was broken, but the laughter was so loud he couldn't hear his screaming. He walked through the sidewalks and the streets and the alleys, into benches and lampposts and bins, feeling the pain from his broken leg and broken leg and broken ribs.

He wished they would stop laughing. If they stopped laughing, he could get some peace . . .

There were voices, sometimes, when the laughter was quietest. They wouldn't ever be quiet now that they were awake. They were angry, angry at being away for so long. People were laughing. Things were whirling, spinning, dropping and raising and twisting. He wanted peace again . . .

A woman screamed and he fell – finger bones snapped – the sky danced a Viennese waltz – her screaming was merging with their laughing and his crying.

"Blood! Blood!"

"Drink it," whispered a calm man. A girl shook and took the cup.

He wanted quiet. He clutched his eyes but his arm and fingers were broken and they couldn't grab.

"Ambulance!"

"Stand back!"

"Don't you touch me!" roared the singer and she put the gun in her mouth and pulled –

He saw white and light and purity, but not peace. People grabbed him and he screamed "My arm, my arm!" because by now bone poked through skin. The laughter rose and turned malicious, thrown at him because he was in pain and couldn't help himself. They were scared.

He didn't know – he didn't know – he didn't know – he didn't –

They stabbed him. Lights spun. High whining and car tires sung out like an aria in A Major. He cried out for his mother and for a girl whose name he didn't know.

"It'll be alright, son, we got you."

"We have you now," the man barked, his breath smelling like beer and cigarettes.

He screamed again. He felt tears on his face and blood on his chest and broken bone on his arm. Leather strapped around his body, binding him, capturing him. He screamed some more, for his mother and father, for girls and boys he didn't know or maybe knew.

"Mum! Mum! Mum, Liffey, Ginny! Please, Clyde, Sirius – Dad, please, help me, please . . ."

"Settle down, son, settle down."

"Rhine!" he screamed. He clutched at air, twisting broken fingers, flexing broken hands. "Rhine! Where's Rhine? Rhine Berlin – where's Rhine Berlin!"

"It's alright son, it's alright – you're safe . . ."

He laughed. He joined in the laughter. It tore his throat and made it fill up with blood and made tears fall more.

The ambulance was spinning all around him. It was laughing at him.

II.

Alison Monroe had worked for forty years in Saint Sarah Hospital's casualty ward. She was sixty-two, and would retire in three years. She worked on patients who had been pulled out of twisted, shattered cars – women beaten black by husbands, raped by strangers – gunshot wounds and stabbings. She had seen everything, and now tonight, Alison could say she had seen it all.

The ambulance brought in the boy after midnight and he was still screaming even though his throat had been cut. Poor lamb, how he had survived so long medicine would never know. He was starved and beaten. His leg had been twisted, his fingers smashed, and his arm – well, Alison didn't know how an arm could get like that in the first place.

The screaming was the worst. He sounded like a child, screaming and crying for his parents and friends. His eyes twisted and swiveled as if trying to run, streaming with tears, a wild, feline green. It rebounded through the ward, through the hospital, as five nurses and two doctors took him to surgery. It stopped when they put him under anesthesia.

He was in for ten hours to repair the broken bones, to stop the bleeding in his belly. They stitched up the cuts and pulled the glass from his arm. They pumped so much blood into him that they ran out of O-. They put pins in his arm and leg and covered them in plaster. A photograph was taken and given to the police so they could search for family.

They kept him sedated so he would sleep, and not scream. Alison and Nurse Hathaway were assigned to his post-operative care. Rebecca Hathaway fluffed his pillows and combed his hair back from his face, flattening it with some cool water. It looked windblown, the same color as raven-feathers.

He was such a delicate-looking boy. Maybe fifteen, maybe younger – Alison had a grandson his age. They'd covered so much of his face in bandages and gauze little was seen. His skin was the same color as plaster. A single scar was seen on his forehead, in the shape of a lightning bolt. It was years old, so they didn't cover it.

"Poor lamb," Rebecca said, stroking his fringe from his face, and leaning over to check his vitals, "I don't even want to know what happened to him."

"We'll know soon enough," Alison assured her, "Once he wakes up."

"Been two days," Rebecca said, worried, brow crinkling in thought, "What if –"

"Don't second guess – you'll never survive here if you start to second guess. You make the notes in his chart?" Rebecca nodded. "Let's go."

Alison turned around, sparing one more look at John Doe's sleeping, scratched-up features. She begged to God his family hadn't caused him – there were too many terrible things in the world, and he shouldn't have to deal with them. She touched her forehead, heart, and shoulders for a cross and walked out with Rebecca for the room next door.

"'Scuse me, 'scuse me!"

"Miss, you can't come down here without a pass –"

"Another homeless person," Rebecca said with a sad sigh. Alison crossed herself again and looked around, plagued already by an unfortunate day.

A girl was walking passed the nurse's station, though they were calling after her. She was filthy, wearing a bomber jacket and a wrap skirt, her long fingers holding a curled up newspaper. The girl was shaking and her other hand clutched her stomach protectively. Alison sighed in despair.

"'Scuse me, 'scuse me," she repeated, tears in her large eyes, hurrying towards Alison, holding out her newspaper, "I – I looking for boy." She had a heavy German accent to her voice and she shoved the paper into Alison's face. "Vith, vith _big _green eyes!"

A security guard stumbled forward and took her by the shoulder. "Terribly sorry, Nurse Monroe," he said, tipping his head forward, "I don't know how she got passed security."

Alison didn't answer. She was looking at the newspaper, at the photograph circled with black crayon over and over again. It was the still, shut-eyed, scarred-up face of John Doe, the screaming boy with the lightning scar.

"Hold on a moment Ted," Alison said, frowning, and leaning towards the homeless girl. She looked up at her with a shaking, quivering, exhausted face, streaked with tears and chimney ash. "Do you know this boy?"

"Thames," she stuttered, "He Thames." She rubbed her eyes viciously and sniffed. "He vell? He alife?"

"Yes he is, Miss," Alison said comfortingly, and turned towards Rebecca, "Go get her a glass of water, dear, that's a good girl. C'mon, young lady, why don't you tell us your name?"

"Rhine Berlin," she said automatically, puffing out her chest and lifting her chin, "Like un nixie. Mädchen." She rubbed her eyes again and followed Alison into John Doe's room, shuffling in an old pair of canvas sneakers. Alison didn't think that Rhine Berlin was really the girl's name, but she remembered that John Doe had been screaming for a Rhine Berlin when he had come into Saint Sarah's.

The girl didn't move when she went into the room. She stood in the doorway and shook, her whole body trembling, both her hands clutching her stomach. She moaned and sobbed gutturally. "Thames, Thames, Thames," she cried, "Thames . . ."

"Here, dear, here's a chair," Alison offered, pulling one up by the boy's bedside, but the girl didn't move. Her hands moved up and clutched her filthy hair, knotting her fingers in the blackened waves. "Miss. Berlin, can you tell me his name?"

"Thames," she said, still not moving, "Thames London."

"Is that his name, Miss?" She didn't respond. She moaned, clutching her head, tears falling down her face. Alison licked her lips. "Miss, is Thames the father of your baby?"

"_Gott ist mein Vater_," she said, softly, like a man's last cry. She shuffled in her filthy sneakers towards the bed, surrounded by equipment, making gentle beeping and humming and noise, "_Mein Vater ist Gott_." She reached a dirty hand to stroke John Doe's hair, tracing his lightning-bolt scar with one finger. Traces of dust and grime were left, dirtying the bandages.

Rebecca came in with the little paper cup of water, which the girl – Rhine Berlin – did not drink at all. Alison pulled her aside and whispered in the hallway, "Ask Doctor Carter down here and have him examine the girl. Ask for a translator, too."

"Doctor Carter – from psychiatry?"

Alison nodded slowly and sadly. She crossed herself, again, and waited in the room until Dr. Carter came down. All Rhine did was stroke John Doe's hair and scar, and whisper things in German.

III.

Every day for three days, Rhine Berlin came at the beginning of visitor's hours and left at the end. Nobody asked where she came from and left her alone with John Doe – Thames London – to pet his hair and moan and hold her belly.

"Tesla," she would say a lot, with a smile, a twinkle in her grey-green eyes, "Edison." She clutched her stomach hardest when she said those names.

He would wake up sometimes, but the sedatives kept him from staying awake too long. Whenever they lowered the dosages, he would start screaming again, and Rhine would start crying, and so the doctors thought it better to let him sleep.

On the third day, when Rhine was in the room, holding Thames's unbroken hand, he had more visitors come in. Three men came in, with passes and visitor tags and odd clothing – two were in their thirties, and one was at the end of his life. One was dark-haired and sallow skin, one had graying brown hair, and the old man had long white hair and a beard.

The old man smiled, blue eyes twinkling, and walked up to the nurse's station at the ICU. Nurse Callahan almost giggled – he was dressed like a Victorian dandy. The sallow-skinned man sneered at her and looked, disgusted, around the hospital.

"Pardon me, young lady, but I've recently found out that my grandson is here," the old man began, still smiling, and pulled a folded photograph and newspaper article from his pocket. He showed both to her – one was the same bad photograph that Rhine Berlin had used to find John Doe, and the other was of a healthy young man with black hair and bright green eyes. "Is Harry here?"

"Oh, _Harry's_ his name?" Leslie Callahan asked, her shoulders sinking in relief, "I thought he might be John Doe forever."

"You mean he hasn't told you his name?" the brown-haired man asked. His face looked haggard and there were bags under his eyes – he hadn't slept or eaten well for months. Leslie looked at him pityingly.

"Well no – he's been sedated and on morphine since he got here. Why don't you wait here while I –"

"We need to see Potter now," the third man demanded sharply, narrowing his black eyes. The nurse shivered in her scrubs. She couldn't disobey a man like that.

"R-right – right this way. I'll have Doctor Gilliam meet you." She shivered again and walked down the corridor, towards Room 15 and John Doe. "I must warn you – he has sustained extensive injuries. It isn't a pretty sight."

The brown-haired man was shaking, visibly, his shoulders hunched and hands quaking. He swallowed twice and tried to speak. The old man frowned. "How did this happen?"

"We think," Leslie began, uneasily, "He fell from a building." Pushed or jumped, they didn't know, and Leslie had no desire for either to be true.

"Typical Potter," the third man snapped and the brown-haired one glared so hard flames might have erupted from his gaze.

"He has another guest with him now, so –"

"Another guest? Who?" All three were suddenly very interested, none more so than the old man, whose eyes had stopped twinkling.

"A homeless girl. She's come in every day to visit him – just sits there and strokes his hair." She didn't think it appropriate to mention Rhine's pregnancy, or her insanity, or her mumbling. She brought them to the room and said, "He's sleeping now, so please don't disturb him."

"Yes, we wouldn't want that, now, would we?" the oily-haired man barked.

"Severus, please," the old man said, and Leslie was glad to watch them leave.

Remus Lupin still felt his whole body shaking, frozen like Azkaban water, his throat dry and head aching. He hadn't slept in months – not since the day they'd found out Harry was missing. Remus remembered that day so easily; he didn't need to shut his eyes to picture it. He had been at Grimmauld Place – it had been July. Nymphadora Tonks had raced into the kitchen and screamed that he was gone.

The first words out of his mouth had been, "Don't tell Sirius!" It had been two months ago. Today was September 1st. Sirius had found out, and he hadn't spoken to Remus since Tonks had told the convict.

He raked his fingers through his hair. It needed to be washed. He walked into the hospital room, behind Dumbledore, and looked at the girl in the chair by the bed. He couldn't help but look at her first because she was directly in his line of vision, and he couldn't do anything else but look. She was a teenager, young, with long dirty brown hair and a bomber jacket on her shriveled shoulders. Grey-green eyes looked up, and her hands were holding Harry's.

"_Willkommen_," she whispered, and reached a hand to stroke his hair and scar, "Sleeping. Shush." She put a finger to her dry, caked lips.

"Hello there young lady," Dumbledore said, smiling, while Remus stared down at Harry. He thought that, maybe, James's son was somewhere lost under the plaster and bandages and strange Muggle metal things. It was a disgusting, disgusting sight, and if Remus had just cared a little bit more, spent a little more time with the Order, it wouldn't have happened.

"Who are you?" snapped Snape without preamble.

"Wife and mama," the girl whispered and brought Harry's limp hand up to her own cheek, making him stroke her face, "Thames is sleeping. Don't vake."

"Can you tell us your name?"

"I don't see why it matters, Headmaster – we found Potter, we can get him to Pomfrey now –"

"Don't you want to know how this happened, Snape?" Remus snarled without trying to keep his voice low. It was shaking, too, just like his clenched hands and jaw. "He looks like – like someone beat him with –"

"Don't be hysterical, Lupin. Potter's sustained worse playing Quidditch. Muggle medicine makes everything look worse."

"Severus," Dumbledore warned and looked at the homeless girl again. Snape locked his jaw and glared ferociously at her, eyes narrowed to black slivers lost in a parchment face. She was staring beyond him with a large, vacant pair of eyes that had nothing to them. Just . . . lost, empty, gone.

"You taking Thames?" she whispered and clutched Harry's hand, wrapping both of hers around the pale, ruined thing that was his. "No . . . no, not, no . . ."

"Thames? The river?"

"Gafe up for me," she said in an even quieter voice, and began to moan. Snape was opening his mouth again, his eyes narrowing even further, lips stretching. One of the Muggle doctors walked into the room, holding charts in his arms, his smile pained and strained and artificial.

"So, you folks are John's relatives, are you?"

"Harry," Remus immediately corrected, since calling him anything else was blasphemous, "His name's Harry Potter."

The doctor nodded. "Right. Now, you're his grandfather, right?" Dumbledore gave a slow nod. He was standing beside Harry's head, and his face looked – well, it was hard to pick an emotion to put on it. His lips and cheeks sagged, his twinkle was gone, and the blue had turned frigid but not hard.

"Your grandson's sustained massive internal injuries. We've repaired his arm and leg, but he'll have a limp, for certain. He's had a nasty crack in his skull, too." The doctor walked forward and turned Harry's head, slightly, and Remus's breath hitched and soured. There were several inches of thick, black stitches coursing from his left ear towards the back of his skull. Some of his hair had been shaved off around it. "He's very lucky to be alive."

Harry was always lucky to be alive. His whole existence was the result of luck. Remus didn't want to hear that. "How did this happen?" Remus asked before he could stop the words from coming out. Of course he knew how. Death Eaters.

"You'll have to talk to the investigating officers. Here," he pulled an index card from his pocket and scribbled a telephone number on it. He handed it to Remus, who didn't even look at it. "Ask for Inspector Collins. Now," and he looked back to Dumbledore. His voice softened and dropped some volumes, "Does your grandson have a history of psychiatric problems?"

"What!"

"No, he doesn't. Why did you ask?"

The doctor licked his lips and shifted his gaze. "It's just, whenever he's awake, he's screaming. He calls for his parents, mostly, but just screams."

"His parents are dead," Snape said, unmoved, voice the same as ever. He was ignoring the homeless girl even though her dead stare was still fixed on him.

"People do that, sometimes, when they're injured like this – more often in children."

"When can we take him home?"

"Oh, that won't be for quite some time – we have to –"

"I'd like him home, with friends and family, if that's alright with you, doctor," Dumbledore said slowly, calmly, explaining something simple to a simple man. Light was back in his eyes, for Legilimency, but it was not his twinkle. Remus was still starring at Harry's face, pale and still and covered in bandages. He hated Muggle medicine, he decided, because it looked unnatural.

The doctor sputtered for a moment and blinked thickly. "R-right, of course, of course – I-I'll get the release forms right away." He stumbled over his own feet and walked out of the room, looking confused and lost, blinking, and muttering, "Release forms. Got it."

"Miss," Dumbledore said, gravely, looking at the filthy girl in the bomber jacket, "I'm going to have to ask you to give us some privacy with Harry."

"Thames," she corrected automatically.

"Harry," corrected Remus.

"Will you do that for us?"

She stuck out her chin and puffed out her chest. "I has rights. I am mama – Tesla or Edison." The hand that didn't hold Harry's fell down to her stomach. "Thames vill pick vhen ve knof."

"What?" Remus's hands had started to shake again, badly and nastily, and he swallowed, "What do you mean?"

"Potter knocked a girl up. It's exactly what it sounds like. _Idiot_."

"You shut up!"

"Enough!" Dumbledore walked over towards the girl, whose lip quibbled and knees shook. Much, much gently, he leaned down to her. "Young lady, can you please tell us your name?"

"_Rhein Mädchen von Berlin_," she hissed between her teeth, standing up, hands clenched at her sides. She looked like she was going to hit him, standing straight backed, unafraid. "I is Rhine Berlin of Planck, and, and, _I VILL NOT LEAFE HIM!_"

Her words echoed loudly in the hospital room and left a quaking, poignant silence in her wake. She breathed heavily. The machines hummed. Remus's heart pounded in his ears.

"She's a Muggle, Headmaster, surely –"

"Not Muggle," she said.

"You're not?" She shook her head.

"Yes, yes, here are release forms for you to sign," the doctor's voice rang out and he shuffled back in, holding some forms, his face still confused and befuddled by a little bit of _convincing_.

IV.

He slept. There wasn't any laughter or voices or light or pain. He liked sleeping. He didn't dream.

When he woke up, there was white light everywhere, just like where, where –

No, not there, anywhere but there, anyplace but that, not there, not where they'd died, where he'd been killed, where, where, where . . .

They pulled needles from his arm. They took tubes from his throat. His veins were full of poison. He felt no pain, no sensation. There were dull thuds in his chest. His lungs touched broken ribs but didn't hurt.

The laughter started again. It rose up. It pushed in. It grabbed and clawed and snatched him. He screamed and struggled. He tried to run but couldn't. His leg was pinned. His arm was thick.

"My leg! My leg!" he screamed and flailed his arm. He struck something and heard it snarl like a wildcat. The laughter dimmed and he swung his arm again.

"Damnit Potter!"

"Mum, mum!"

He was crying again. He felt the tears, like ice, like diamonds, on his cheeks. Something was strangling him. Tentacles of cloth – he grabbed at them to claw them off. "Rhine!" he screamed, "Where's Rhine, Rhine Berlin?"

"_Ich bin hier_," she whispered. She held his hand tighter and stroked his hair. He smelled her stink, "I am here."

"How do I know? You – liar – please –"

"Failure, failure," mumbled the chemist, and took a hold of the tube in the rack to swallow.

"String theory," she whispered, "We're always connected. Together."

He fell limp. He looked up, into the sky, the white, the empty, and saw her eyes. The grey-green eyes, like sea-foam, soft like sea-foam, river-foam. He smiled and clutched her hand. "Rhine," he whispered. He spoke her language, like they'd taught him. "_Und unserer anstecken_?"

"German? He can't speak German . . ."

"_Hier_," Rhine promised and he relaxed.

"_Portus_," a man whispered. He recognized it.

"_Greis die Hummel_," he told Rhine, "Old man, the bumblebee. Please don't go . . ."

"String theory," she assured, holding him tighter, cradling over his body, "String theory, Thames, string theory."

"We're bringing you to somewhere safe, Harry," whispered the bumblebee, "To the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, in Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place."

"Twelve apostles," he muttered, "Twelve months." The numbers chased away the laughter and he repeated some more, until all he could hear was his breathing and Rhine's heart and three people from a past life. "Twelve times twelve – one-four-four – twenty-four is twelve times two – twenty-four hours to a day."

"What're you babbling about, Potter?"

His hand was pulled away from Rhine. Something was put into it and his fingers were closed around it. A piece of paper. He felt a tug on his stomach. He began to scream as the world began to spin and whorl and twirl and the laughter was reaching pitches even though the numbers had chased them away and all he was to sleep except he couldn't and . . . and . . .

"One times one is one! One times two is two!" he screamed and flailed his arms, "Rhine! Rhine! Mum, dad, Sirius – where are you – where're you –"

"_Ich bin hier. _I am here."

"I'm _here_," wheezed the woman in the white coat, "Look at me, boy, look at me and _say it_."

A thud. He fell. He collapsed and then rose again.

"_Mobilicorpus_."

"Into here – it's a spare room, there's a bed."

"Rem –?"

"_Leave, Tonks!_"

"LEAVE!" he was bellowing towards the small child in the corner who was bleeding and shaking his head, "NO! DON'T!"

He was put on a bed. It was soft, much softer than in the white place but he still couldn't move because of everything that was broken. Rhine wasn't there. The bumblebee was.

"Harry, do you know who I am?"

"I can't feel my leg," he said, moaning. His stomach was empty and his head was full of thoughts that weren't working.

"_Harry_," the man said and reached out to touch him on the arm.

The laughter turned into screaming. A thousand men were screaming. A thousand women were screaming. He heard all of it – it all was echoing, echoing, circling, pushing, grabbing – it scratched at his face and neck and tried to dig out the veins in his neck. Pictures flooded his brain. Faces. Smirking, sneering, twisting faces.

A Potions Professor. A Chemist. An Arsonist. A Death Eater. An Uncle, an Aunt. The men in white. The Man in Blue grabbed him.

"I've always wanted this," he breathed. He smelled like beer and cigarettes. "Get rid of your youthful defiance, I will." He laughed.

He screamed. "DON'T TOUCH ME! DON'T TOUCH ME – GET AWAY FROM ME!" He tried to pull away, to get into a corner, but the metal, the plaster, the pins on his legs kept him still. "MUM – SIRIUS! SIRIUS!"

A sob. "Oh Harry, what happened to you?"

V.

Sirius Black was not a patient man. He was not a forgiving, understanding man. Once, he had been a man who had taken pride in his appearance, but not anymore. He hadn't cared about it for months. He hadn't cared about anything for months. Nothing had mattered since July 1st, when Nymphadora Tonks had rushed in, and said that Harry Potter had disappeared from his relatives' house.

He sat in the kitchen of his mother's house, with rye whiskey in a bottle in his hands. His face was sour and unshaven and he smelled like beer, sweat, and piss, not just whiskey. He couldn't shut his eyes without seeing Harry's face. His godson – well, it had been three months. Death Eaters didn't keep prisoners alive for three months. Voldemort wouldn't keep Harry Potter alive for three months.

Sirius drank more whiskey. It tasted like shit – he needed to stop asking Dung for booze.

"'m sorry James," he sobbed, and collapsed into his folded arms. His body was racked with trembling. Tears didn't fall because he had run out. "'m sorry James, Lily, 'm sorry 'arry, so sorry . . ."

Footsteps said that someone entered into the kitchen. It was Remus, who was pale and shaking and looked about to vomit. Sirius didn't care – he didn't speak to Remus anymore. Remus had hid, for a month, the knowledge Harry was gone. He had let Sirius live in denial for months. He wasn't a forgiving, understanding person.

"Sirius," Remus began, his voice hollow, like he'd been crying, "Sirius, please talk to me."

"'m sorry . . ."

"Sirius, we . . ." He swallowed. "We found Harry."

Sirius's head jerked up and the sobbing died in his throat a slow, agonizing death. He knocked the whiskey bottle over when he stood up, and thought of smashing if over Remus's head. He'd feel better, a little, maybe.

"You found his body?" he asked, hoarsely, a croak of a voice.

"No, Sirius – Padfoot, he's _alive_," Remus said, walking forward, wringing his hands, "We found him in a Muggle hospital in London. He's alive."

"Alive?" No, that was impossible. Death Eaters didn't leave survivors. "He's not alive. You're wrong."

"Padfoot, he's here – down the hall."

"Here?" He felt hazy. "Harry's here?" He repeated it twice more, aloud, and a dozen times more within his own mind. Harry – here – alive. The alcohol stemmed back the words for a moment, but they came out with force and a stumble of feet. "I need to see him! Where is he!"

"Down the hall," Remus repeated and, though his mouth was still open and words were still leaving it, Sirius had bolted and left the room. He stumbled down the hallway, the change in light making sparkles twinkle, and used the wall for a guide.

"Harry!" he shouted, tears of happiness, ecstasy, and raw emotion coursing down an unwashed face, "Harry, where're you!" A door was open down the hall and he flew towards it, the doorknob smashing into his gut and the door hitting his bare heels as he stumbled in.

The room was small and bare. It had been used as the room for the single human servant Walburga Black employed – the governess for her sons. It smelled of mildew and rats – the bed was about to snap under the weight of its occupant. The chair had already fallen apart because someone had tried to sit on wood rotten since the seventies.

A girl in a dirty bomber's jacket was beside the boy in the bed, cooing nonsense, smoothing his hair. Sirius had no eyes for her – only for the boy, his godson, an invalid, dressed in white cotton and plaster and bandages. He was sitting up, holding a broken arm to his chest, a broken leg stretched out. His face was covered in little scars and Muggle stitches. He looked lost, big green eyes blinking, child-like, infantile.

"HARRY!" Sirius shouted and collapsed at his side, "You – you – you're alive . . ."

Harry was staring ahead. A smile had tucked in one corner of his mouth and listed up another. His lips were slightly open. "Hello," he said, softly, slowly, the pitch shaking. Sirius looked at him, but alcohol and tears made the world blur.

"What happened, Harry – was it Death Eaters? Was it Malfoy, _Wormtail_?"

"Hello."

Sirius's eyes wanted to widen, but he didn't have the focus to make them do so. They shook in their sockets and stared at Harry's calm, languid eyes. "Harry?" he whispered.

"Thames," said the girl. He didn't hear her.

"Harry?"

"You smell like he did," Harry said, still in that same slow, soft voice, like there wasn't enough of him there to talk normally, "Like beer and cigarettes."

"Like blue," said the girl. She began to quake and shake and she clutched her stomach.

"You can't do anything to us," Harry whispered, leaning forward, keeping his body stiff like his pelvis was bolted to the bed. He didn't blink and pushed his face into Sirius's, so that Sirius could see his own dirty face in Harry's untainted eyes. "We're witnesses. You do anything to us, and we'll tell what you did to Mediterranean." Tears fell down the girl's cheeks. Harry's smile twisted and curled and made his eyes grow even larger. "I'll bet Canon will take away the beer, won't it?"

"What're you –"

"The Muggle doctor said that he needed a psychiatrist," Remus said from the doorway. His brown eyes were staring at Harry in pity and sympathy and grief. "That's, that's a Muggle version of a mentalist. Dumbledore's trying to see if one from St. Mungo's can, can come down, maybe – join the Order and –"

"He's _insane_? Is that what you're trying to tell me Lupin – that my _godson's insane_!"

Sirius looked dangerous when he stood up. His teeth were bared and snarling and he rounded on Remus. Harry didn't blink or flinch when the yelling started. The girl was crying quietly, rubbing her eyes with a dirty sleeve.

"We don't know that, Sirius!"

"We wouldn't have to wonder why if you were watching him, like you were supposed to!"

"Don't you think I don't know that?"

"'Scuse me, 'scuse me." There was a tug on the sleeve of Sirius's robe. He spun around and his fist missed the top of the girl's head. She looked up at him with watery, dead eyes, and slipped him a bit of folded paper. "Ve need books, and paper, and _lots _of paper."

"Who the hell are you, anyway?"

"She said her name was Rhine."

"Why's she here?"

"She was in the hospital when we got there. She, she says that . . ." Remus shut his mouth. There wasn't any reason to tell Sirius that. It was just pointless and painful, and he didn't need to know that the girl was pregnant with what she said was Harry's child. It would destroy him. But he had thought Harry's disappearance was pointless and painful information that would destroy him, and Sirius needed to know that. He inhaled. "She's pregnant. She said Harry's the father."

"Can you get us these books?"

Sirius howled in misery, and collapsed. Harry blinked and smiled.

"Hello."

* * *

**Disclaimer:**

I do not own Harry Potter. He and his universe are property of JK Rowling and Warner Brothers. I own this plotline and all original characters contained within it.

**Author's Note**:

Harry/OC? BLASPHEMY!

For those waiting to wring my neck, this is far from romance. I don't plan on having Harry gush after a Mary Sue. I somehow doubt he's going to be able to do any gushing in this story, at all, unfortunately.

This story is brought to you by a renewed interest in science and math that the American public school system has systematically destroyed over the last eleven years. Blame PBS and Carl Sagan.

**Statistics**

_First Posted _8.1.08

_Pages _15

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_Font _Times New Roman

_Font Size _12


	2. Magic of Madness VI to X

Part I: The Magic of Madness

* * *

VI.

The girl called Rhine Berlin was sitting at the kitchen table. Molly Weasley had captured and cleaned her when she had first seen her. Dead grey-green eyes looked at the Order members. Brown hair fell in her face. The robes she wore now showed the bump on her flat stomach clearer.

"Young lady," said Kingsley Shacklebolt's low, slow voice, "Please, tell us what you know about what happened to Harry Potter."

"Thames," she said, for the thousandth time, without impatience or weariness.

"We're getting nowhere. She's _insane_ – what do you expect her to say, anyway?"

"The truth," snarled Moody and tried to stare her down, but that was impossible because nobody can stare down a corpse, "What's your real name, girl?"

"Max Planck," she said, looking up at him. Everyone knew it was a lie even if nobody knew who Max Planck really was, "Vill ve get our books?"

"We checked, girl," Moody said and waved the piece of paper she had given Sirius in one twisted hand. Her large crayon writing was visible to nobody. "None of these books were in Flourish and Blott's. You made up these titles, didn't you, to send us on a goose chase?"

"Alastor, not now."

Molly Weasley wrung her hands together, eyes bloodshot, red as her hair. She looked at the girl. She didn't know whether to pity her, or condemn her, since she had tried Harry into doing _that_ with her. She inhaled a breath. She had been crying a lot in the past few months and hours. "Where did you meet Harry, dear?" she said, forcing the last word out.

Rhine pulled her knees up to her chest and began to cry into her kneecaps. She rocked back and forth, and answered no more questions. Remus got up from the table and walked out of the room, raking his fingers through his brown hair, glad nobody looked at him or tried to speak to him. He shut the door behind him and pressed up against it. Weariness and thirty years of it fell on his shoulders.

This was his fault. This was his fault. Harry was insane and it was his fault.

"Harry." Sirius's voice floated down the hallway. Remus shut his eyes – he didn't want to hear that. "Do you remember me? Do you remember me at all?"

"You know you can kill a cat but still keep it alive?" came Harry's voice, weary, tired, "Put poison and a Geiger counter in a box and . . ."

"Wotcher, Remus."

He turned around and smiled when he saw Tonks, awkwardly by his elbow, her hair pink-tipped brown. She had managed to sneak up on him. She held one wrist with her other hand and shifted, uneasily, in a trench coat drenched with rain.

"Hullo Tonks," Remus said, trying to smile but forcing it too much, "Where've you been off to for so long?"

"Scrimgeour," she said with another tangled sigh, "Tellin' him we found Harry. Had to say he was staying with Muggles in Cardiff – Prophet's going to have a field day, innit it?" She shook her hair to make it look windblown, pushing it into her eyes. Even she couldn't keep them from being red. "How are you, Remus?"

"Tired," he said. He kept his mouth shut about the rest. "Better than most."

"I don't think so," she said. Remus raised an eyebrow. Her face colored and she looked down at her feet. "Never mind."

"But the box," Harry's dry voice wafted out, "Has to be sealed against quantum decoherence. Waste of time, otherwise." He laughed. It sounded forced. Ha, ha, ha.

"Hasn't anyone gotten a healer to see him?"

"Dumbledore's trying to convince a mentalist – Adela Adams? – to join the Order. But not yet, and Madame Pomfrey hasn't been able to get away from Hogwarts so far."

Tonks shook her half-pink hair. "This is a nightmare," she whispered with disgust, "I want to wring the neck, personally, of whoever did that."

"Take a number," Remus said without humor.

Soft footsteps padded the ground. Sirius appeared in the doorway of the small bedroom. He had put on a good suit and shaved. His face looked emaciated but it was smiling. His eyes sparkled but looked grieved. "Tonks!" he said, smile stretching, walking over towards her, "Good to see you back again – you haven't met Harry yet, have you?"

She swallowed and her smile quivered. "Oh, no, I really need to, uh – work and um –"

"You can show him that trick you do with your noses!" Sirius tugged on her sleeve and pulled her in. She looked, eyes widened, towards Remus. Remus followed them into Harry's small room, his own hands shaking, heartbeat rising, guilt and bile swarming.

Harry was sitting on the bed, holding the arm in the cast, his plastered leg on a pillow, and untouched dinner on the bedside table. He didn't have glasses on. His eyes looked much bigger, the green consuming the whites, smiling vacantly, looking at the cracks in the wall. Sirius bounded to his godson's side, pulling Tonks along.

"Hey, Harry – this is my cousin's daughter, Nymphadora, but she doesn't like to be called that," Sirius said, pulling the chair closer towards Harry's side. Harry blinked slowly, as though with difficulty. "You can call her Tonks – we all do. She's an Auror."

"You put hydrocyanic acid in the box with the cat, but the cat can't touch the acid. Ruins it if the cat can get at the acid," he said, picking at the plaster, "I don't think Schrödinger liked cats very much."

"Wotcher, Harry," Tonks said slowly. He didn't look up. Remus swallowed hard, thick, pain constricting his chest. Sirius smiled widely, as if the larger he smiled the more right it would make things.

"You know I don't like cats very much either," Sirius said, leaning onto his knees, raking one hand through his hair, "Except Crookshanks. He's alright – don't you think Crookshanks is a good cat, Remus?"

"Very good cat," Remus said. His voice was inaudible. He tried to smile, too, but gave up. Tonks checked her wrist even though she wore no watch.

"Look at the time!" she gushed, relief, "I have to, uh, go and meet . . . Dawlish . . . pub . . . business – Dark Wizards –" She turned on her heels, and tripped as she ran from the room. Remus wanted to follow her. He stared at Harry, who turned, slowly, and smiled just as wide as Sirius.

"The cat becomes half alive and half dead," Harry explained, and tapped his temple with one trembling finger, "Do you think the cat can see God?"

"I'm sure it can, Harry," Sirius said. He spoke like he was at a man's deathbed, and couldn't believe the Reaper stood there, too. Remus clenched his hands so hard his nails dug into the muscle and the bone.

VII.

Leslie Callahan was on duty September the eighth. She was at the desk again, filling out the remains of Doctor Gilliam's patient files. There was a mix up in filing. John Doe (Thames London and Harry Potter, too) had not had a final analysis completed. She wondered how that had happened.

"We need to speak with Daniel Gilliam."

Leslie looked up. Two people, a man and a woman, in black suits and glasses stood in front of the desk. The man had a metal case in his left hand, and the woman had a six-star pin on her lapel.

"Excuse me?" Leslie asked.

"SIS," the woman said, and pulled a badge from her inside pocket. The seal of the Secret Intelligence Service reflected in a plastic case. The name said Jane Smith, and the woman had an American accent. "We need to speak with Daniel Gilliam."

Leslie swallowed and stood up, fumbling with the decision to put the pen down or take it with her. The woman's cold brown eyes looked at her behind dark glasses. There were flecks of wild, feline green in the brown, like grass in mud. "O-Of course I-I'll –"

"Now," the woman said. Leslie fled the desk and towards the hall, slipping in her plastic clogs. Gilliam was with the seventy-two-year-old with rheumatic fever. She heard his brogue float down the hallway. She saw him, back turned, by the patient's bed, his hair balding and white, like candyfloss.

"Doctor Gilliam," Leslie said, voice shaking, hands pale, vomit in her throat, "There's – there's people from SIS here to see you."

"What?" Gilliam turned. Eyebrows were cocked and his skin turned the color of his hair.

"MI-6," she said and licked her lips. She tried to smile. "You been, you been spying on us, Doctor?"

Neither of them laughed. Gilliam fixed his tie and swept his thin hair back, walking towards the man and woman by the desk. They stood, still as statues, cold as marble, black as ravens, and looked at him with unseen eyes flickered with bits of green.

"I'm Doctor Gilliam," he introduced, offering a hand. Neither took it and he let it fall to his side. "What's this about?"

"Classified matter," the man said with a Dublin lit, "You need to come with us, Doctor."

"Excuse me?"

"You need to come with us."

"Not until I know what this is about!"

The woman stepped forward, her face etched, scowling though expressionless. "We have some questions regarding a patient under your care, Doctor – Harry Potter."

"He was discharged a week ago, on the fourth," Gilliam said quickly. His heart was pounding too loudly for him to hear his thoughts. "To, to his grandfather."

"Please come with us." There was no request or option in her voice. Gilliam would come, either in handcuffs or cooperation. He looked, helplessly, at the nurses behind him, the colleagues staring, the patients whispering. He swallowed and offered himself at the mercy of the agents. The woman led him away and the man approached Leslie.

"I need all the patient files for Harry Potter. I need to speak with Alison Monroe, as well." His eyes contained the sparkle, promise, and threat of pain and sanctions if he was not obeyed. Leslie scampered, feeling ill, wondering what the poor boy could have done to incite the MI-6 agents' wrath.

VIII.

There were numbers floating around him. They were numbers but didn't look like numbers – like light that _were_ and _weren't _numbers at the same time. He tried to grab one, to see it, to feel it, to prove it had a purpose and they danced out of reach. He couldn't move far. His leg was captured. He was bound. He watched them glitter.

The new room was dark. There was no white. There was no screaming – they had chased away the screaming. But they were angry. They had been asleep so long. They told him not to yell, even though there was so much pain in his arm and leg and ribs. They told him not to speak about the things in the white room, about the others and the White Coats.

Rhine was gone. He shook with fright. He wanted to know where she was. They couldn't have her. She was his responsibility, they said. He had to protect her.

"Hullo."

"Who's there?" he asked. He held onto his broken arm. He couldn't fight if they attacked.

"It's just me, Harry – it's just me, Padfoot."

"I'm the Cat. Are you well?"

"I can't feel my leg," he said and tried to twitch it even though it didn't budge or move in its white plaster cast.

"Don't worry – Madame Pomfrey's coming down to see you first chance she gets. Busy school year and, and that." Something touched his hand and he yelled out because the hands were too warm on his cold skin. "Don't worry, you'll be back at Hogwarts before you can say Snitch."

"Pain means you're alive," said the Cat, and he could tell that whatever the Cat was it had grey eyes and hair, "It's a good thing to be alive. It means you can still do what you need to do."

"What? What do I need to do?"

"Harry?"

He shut out the other noise, the other voice, the man with warm hands in the dark room. He listened to the Cat. He listened to its purring voice. He listened to its message, its instructions, because he could tell that it was important to listen.

"You need to get a computer. A good computer. One that can work quickly." He nodded intently. He squinted to try and see the Cat. He could see the dark room. He could see the man with warm hands. He couldn't see the Cat. It scared him. It was invisible, like air and gravity and God. "And you need to kill the Black Hat."

He drew backwards. He knew that man. The Black Hat worked for the Man in Blue.

"I can't," he choked, "He knows . . . he – he can get to _everybody_. We're not safe. I can't –"

"Who're you talking about? Of course you're safe. Dumbledore made this place safe."

"The Black Hat!" he snapped to the man with warm hands, "Don't you listen!"

"Black hat? What hat?"

"You can and will kill the Black Hat," the Cat told him, soothing, calm, collective, sweet, honest, "You need to, otherwise he'll hurt more people. You need to kill the Black Hat first, because without him, the rest of the Coats are powerless."

"No," he moaned and drew tighter, holding closer to his chest his arm even though his ribs hurt most, "They're too powerful to ever be powerless."

"You must. You need to."

He shuddered. He was cold again. The dark was coming in, like rain. It was sweeping him with chill. He was thinking of the Black Hat, of the Man in Blue, of the other White Coats that flew under the Man in Blue's banner.

"There's five," he muttered, to himself, not to the rain, chill, or man with warm hands, "Five White Coats."

"Harry?"

"The Black Hat. The Beldam. The Southern Gentlemen. The Painter. The Demon." Their faces flashed across his eyes. Their wild eyes. Their furious eyes. Their glittery fly-eyes, staring down at him. "There's five of them. There were six of us. Seven. Mediterranean." He smiled. "Five, six, seven. Aren't numbers fun?"

"Harry?" Warm hands touched his hair. They flickered towards his scar. They didn't touch it. "Harry, don't worry, Madame Pomfrey's coming soon – Ron and Hermione, too. I'll bet Dumbledore'll let them come and see you."

"You must kill the Black Hat," the Cat told him.

"I can't."

"Harry what?"

"I CAN'T!" he roared. He swung his fist. It hit something. The screaming stopped so he began to hit again and again and again with the plaster hand. He smelled blood. It was like Mediterranean Jane's. "I CAN'T – I WON'T BECOME LIKE THEM! MURDERER! MURDERER!"

Thump. Smash. Something hit him. The screaming grew louder and louder. He couldn't bare it. People grabbed him. Nails drew on skin. People's hands – warm hands – the smell of beer –

Blue eyes. He screamed.

"GET AWAY FROM ME!"

"Harry it's us!"

"I SAW WHAT YOU DID TO MEDITERRANEAN!"

"It's me, Professor Lupin, remember?"

"Stun him, for Merlin's sake!"

"I KNOW WHERE YOU BURRIED HER BODY! I KNOW WHERE YOU PUT HER HEAD!" He swung the plaster arm. It was covered in speckles of blood. He saw blood before. Blood on white, dots on laboratory floors, as they shoved the needles – "MUM!"

"For God's –!"

"Arthur, do something!"

"_Stupefy!_"

And then the screaming stopped.

IX.

Remus joined Sirius for a beer tonight. He didn't drink much. He often wondered why he didn't drink more, now. The house was silent. Everyone else had gone, but Remus stayed. The beer tasted sour but neither of them minded it.

"He's really gone, isn't he, Mooney?" Sirius asked. His face was buried behind black bangs. Remus couldn't look at him. "He's really – he's mad, isn't he?"

"We don't know that," Remus began.

"Of course we bloody do!" Sirius looked up. His face was patchwork bruises and a broken nose. Harry had beaten him black and blue in his fugue. "He's insane."

"Dumbledore will find a way to fix it."

"_Dumbledore_," spat Sirius, "Was supposed to know a way to keep things like this from happening."

"We don't even know what really happened."

"I'm going to hunt down whoever did this," Sirius promised to the tabletop, "I'm going to find who did this and I'm going to tear them apart. I'll blast them to pieces so small they won't be able to find a finger."

Remus prayed it was just the beer speaking. He looked at his friend and saw vengeance lighting up the dead dark eyes.

"'Scuse me, 'Scuse me!"

Boots shuffled in the girl in the bomber coat. Rhine Berlin, she said her name was, over and over again. Her face and fingers were covered in ash. She had rolled up her sleeves to paint numbers in soot on her arms. Remus looked at her. He didn't want to deal with her now, never, actually. But he smiled in pity at the poor pregnant thing.

Rhine tugged at his shirt sleeve. Her filthy fingers discolored his arm too. "'Scuse me, vhere is books, paper?"

"What do you want?" Sirius barked at her. He had even less patience. He didn't have any patience anymore, really.

"Happy life for Tesla, Edison," she mumbled. She still tugged at Remus's arm. He took out his wand and summoned some paper from the next room over. She pounced upon it, dipping her finger in the ink to work. "Mama alvays told me you got to vrite addresses, und I vant to be a good Mama too."

She wrote down 4 Privet Drive. Sirius grabbed her arm and Remus stood up. Rhine blinked lazily.

"Who told you that address?"

"The Black Hat," she said simply. Sirius's fingers tightened around her wrist. He could break it, easy, since there wasn't much to that.

"Who's that?"

"Let her go, Sirius," Remus warned, moving just that much closer towards the unstable man. Rhine blinked her eyes again. Her breath smelled like halitosis and garbage. Remus wondered if she had lived off of garbage.

"He's the one vho found Thames," she said and began to shrink into her coat, "He found all of us. Mißgeburten." She whimpered, like an abused kitten. "Called us Mißgeburten. 144 Oppenheimer Avenue, London."

"What?"

"Oppenheimer," she repeated, spitting the word into Sirius's face, "Vhere Lazarus and Mediterranean are buried. But you hafe to run if you don't vant the real Mißgeburten to beat you to it." She giggled and tapped her ink-black fingers onto the tip of Sirius's nose. "You look like a puppy." He growled and let her go.

Remus followed him out of the kitchen and redoubled his steps when he saw Sirius by the doorway. His footsteps thundered on the dusty carpet. The acrid smell rose to his nose and he grabbed Sirius by his own foul-smelling robe.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"She gave a London address. It's a lead on whatever happened to Harry," Sirius said. Innocent, nonplussed. He saw no problems with his plan.

"They'll throw you back into Azkaban if Aurors catch you outside!"

"Let me go, Lupin."

Remus's fingers tightened. "You're not going to help the Order by getting yourself Kissed or killed. We'll investigate the lead."

And Sirius turned around to laugh in Remus's face. It was a shuddering, hollow, humorless slap across the face. "You think I'm going to leave anything up to you? It's your fault he's insane in the first place!"

He swung a fist and broke Sirius's aristocratic nose for the second time that day. Blood sprayed up on the walls. The Animagus stumbled backwards and hit the table. He looked bewildered, stunned, like his godson in the room above. Remus stared without seeing at the blood on his fist and on the wall and on Sirius's face.

"'Scuse me, 'Scuse me – I need paper. Lots of paper."

Nobody looked at Rhine.

X.

The next morning the sky was bright and blue and full of light. Remus was nursing a hangover and bruised knuckles. Tonks wondered how he got both but didn't want to ask. She chewed on a piece of bubblegum and the sound drowned out all the traffic in London central.

"I got in contact with Frieda – my old dormmate, the mentalist – she's supposed to meet me for lunch on Saturday. Dumbledore wants me to get her in the Order," Tonks babbled. She'd said all of this before. Remus still listened, checking his map and the little index card in his fingers.

_Inspector John Collins_

_020 7230 1212 ext. 6546__  
__Metropolitan Police Service__  
__New Scotland Yard_

He'd get what he could from the Muggle detective. Then he'd go to Oppenheimer Avenue.

He owed it to Harry to find out what had happened. It was his fault.

The Scotland Yard's building was tall and grey. It was full of people – uniformed bobbys and trench-coated inspectors. Many eyed Tonks in her cutoff shirt and low-rider jeans. Remus flushed when she didn't. A receptionist looking strained listened to his request.

"You're in luck," she said, "He's not on a case today. You can go see him – desk twelve, next to Homicide." She smiled when Remus and Tonks left her. He didn't think she should have. People shouldn't smile right after they've mentioned murder.

"Merlin, this place is worse than Auror's Offices at rush time," Tonks observed, sidestepping a hurried man in uniform, "I don't know how Muggles manage without magic."

"Tonks, shush," he said. The ring of a thousand telephones pounded into his head, shrill and echoing, reminding him of the hospital machines. He walked passed desk nine, desk ten, eleven, and stopped at twelve.

A man was asleep amongst paperwork and coffee and photographs of family members. Remus looked at Tonks, who smiled at him, and kicked the back of the man's chair. He snored, he shook, he shot up, and scratched his eyes.

"Ger, ah, Inspector Collins, at yer service," he said. Blue eyes looked at Lupin brown. "What can I help you two with?"

"One of the nurses at St. Sarah's Hospital gave me this," Remus said and passed forth the little business card, "You're working on my nephew's case." It felt strange to say. Remus was more family than the Dursleys were. But he'd been just as neglectful as them.

"And who's your nephew? Oh – he wasn't the beat up screaming kid, was he?"

Remus's hands went tight, his muscles taunt. Collins flipped through papers on his desk. He didn't hear Remus correct him and say, "No, he was Harry Potter." Collins procured a manila folder stained with coffee rings and opened up.

Photographs of Harry's smashed up, contorted, screaming, bloodied face first reached his eyes.

"What'd you want to know?"

"What exactly happened to him?" Tonks managed to ask because Remus couldn't. The photographs burned into his mind.

A broken nose. A blown pupil. Bloody skin covered in scratches. Hair shorn off. Brain matter leaking out of one side.

"Well we ain't sure either. Woman called in an ambulance on Baker Street. He'd just been wandering around there, screaming. Can't tell you much more – ongoing investigation. He doing better?"

"Y-yeah," Tonks lied because Remus couldn't.

"We'll tell you if there's any leads on the case."

Tonks shot him a look, pursed lips, eyes crooked. Remus shrugged at her. She grabbed Collins by the wrist, oh so gently, and looked at him in the eye.

"Thank you, Inspector, for doing all this. I don't think I could live if we never found out what happened to my cousin." And Tonks began to cry. She could've been an actress in West End, Remus thought, numb and embarrassed. Collins looked awkward.

"It'll be alright. You've got the best in Metro police lookin' out for him. C'mon, you want some coffee?"

"Oh, t-thank you," she made herself choke and Collins led her away.

Deceptive, cruel, manipulative – Marauder material. She was blood with Sirius, alright. He pulled the same kind of trick on older girls for attention. Remus's knuckles hurt when he thought of Sirius and shook the past out of his mind.

Harry's case file was on the desk. He took the opportunity to open it and began to read.

_Broken left radius + ulna_

_Broken left femur_

_Broken right fibula + tibia_

_Broken temporal bone_

From observable notes to evidence log – there was a close-up photograph of a little plastic bracelet, like the kind the hospital had given Harry. But it didn't say 'DOE, JOHN – ICU' like the hospital bracelet had. Remus squinted to read it.

_Nat. Name: P, HJ Given: LONDON, R.T._

_Sup.: OSTERMAN, Jane_

_Chim. Child: Fielding, Davenport, Handler_

_Admin: 7/1/2005 3:15:48 AM. Lbtmy, Amyg._

_PROPERTY OF LAZARUS LTD._

Rhine Berlin has said that 144 Oppenheimer Avenue was where Lazarus was buried. She must have meant Lazarus Ltd. That was a Muggle company title, Remus knew, but what on earth did that mean?

"Can I help you, sir?"

A Scotsman was leering down at Remus, arms crossed, eyes squinted. Remus closed the folder, said no, and went to find Tonks somewhere by the coffee machine. He didn't know how Muggles dealt with not having coffee automatically.

She bade goodbye to Inspector Collins and seemed glad to be rid of him.

"What'd you find out?" she asked, excited, but serious. The Auror's glint was in her baby-blue eyes today.

"Not much. Give me some paper." Summoning up his memory, he wrote down exactly what had been on the photographed bracelet onto the paper bit. His handwriting was rushed and sloppy but readable. "This is the second time I've heard Lazarus mentioned."

"What's Ltd. mean?"

"Limited. It's what Muggles put after company names.

"Weird," she said, shaking her bubblegum head. Remus sighed and pointed at the name Osterman, Jane.

"We should find her. I don't know what 'sup' means, but it's a full name, right?"

"Yeah." She tucked the paper into her pocket and looked square at him. "I think you need sleep."

"I'd say the same of you. You swallowed two bottles of Rambo Raggie's Energy Potion this morning."

"Remus," she said and took his wrist like she had taken Collins's, "You need sleep."

"I assure you I'm fine. And we're wasting time." He pulled out of his pocket a map of London and began to pick it apart with his eyes for where Oppenheimer Avenue was. He tried to ignore Tonk's observatory look and the photographs of Harry's frozen, screaming face and the memory of the mad babbling about Mediterranean Jane –

Mediterranean Jane. Jane Osterman. Were they the same person?

"_I KNOW WHERE YOU BURRIED HER BODY! I KNOW WHERE YOU PUT HER HEAD!"_

Well, whoever she was, she was decapitated. Or could he trust anything that Harry said?

* * *

**Disclaimer:**

I do not own Harry Potter. He and his universe are property of JK Rowling and Warner Brothers. I own this plotline and all original characters contained within it.

**Author's Note**:

Ugh. Been sick, took SATs, still need to do Studio Art homework. Finally finished this chapter and am not happy with it. It's nowhere near as good as how chapter one came out.

Now that I've trashed my own work, I'll hope you review it and tell me I'm wrong!

**Statistics**

_First Posted _10.5.08

_Pages _13

_Paragraphs _206

_Lines _586

_Words _4,601

_Characters _21,218

_Font _Times New Roman

_Font Size _12


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